2011/4/12 Bernard Matthews philoscience@gmail.com:
Thank you very, very much for getting in touch with me!
I solved the problem before I got your email, but didn't have a chance to email an update yet.
On my system, it appears flashrom cannot be run from an Xterm window. If that is in the documentation somewhere, I apologize for missing it.
No, it's not. This sounds weird.
I first verified with "flashrom -v 88GAP901_BST_20110411.BST" that the image currently in the rom matched my backup file, in case I had to reboot.
I cannot recall if I did reboot first, or if I had just closed X windows.
Using flashrom from a text terminal CLI worked perfectly! I see the new file and date on my boot screen now, and so far no problems.
Thank you folks very much for such a wonderful program.
----- bernard
On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 2:16 PM, Idwer Vollering vidwer@gmail.com wrote:
2011/4/12 Bernard Matthews philoscience@gmail.com:
Hi Help,
I thought I did what was right, but apparently I'm missing something.
System details:
BioStar TA785G3 v 6.1 according to the printing on the mainboard.
Athlon II X3 435.
Label on factory CMOS: 88GAP901BST. But the date showing on boot is 3/31/2010.
I'm trying to replace the CMOS info because of an intermittent board failure that I felt I had reduced to either a processor failure or a board failure.
The mainboard comes with a built-in utility on F12 to flash the new file, but it rejects the file claiming that the BIOS ID does not match.
The new file came from Biostar. I actually downloaded two copies, one from Taiwan, and one from USA, and diff'd them to make sure they were the same.
So below are the results of my attempt to flash the chip :-(.
Here's my initial run to check for compatibility with my board (blank spaces/lines added for legibility) ============================================================== grml@grml /mnt/2011_home/netvista % sudo flashrom
flashrom v0.9.2-r1141 on Linux 2.6.36-grml (i686), built with libpci 3.1.7, GCC 4.4.5 20100728 (prerelease), little endian flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org
Calibrating delay loop... OK. No coreboot table found. Found ITE Super I/O, id 8718 Found chipset "AMD SB700/SB710/SB750", enabling flash write... OK. This chipset supports the following protocols: LPC,FWH,SPI. Found chip "Macronix MX25L8005" (1024 KB, SPI) at physical address 0xfff00000. No operations were specified. ==============================================================
grml@grml /mnt/2011_home/netvista % sudo flashrom -r 88GAP901_BST_20110411.BST
This is your backup file...
flashrom v0.9.2-r1141 on Linux 2.6.36-grml (i686), built with libpci 3.1.7, GCC 4.4.5 20100728 (prerelease), little endian flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org
Calibrating delay loop... OK. No coreboot table found. Found ITE Super I/O, id 8718 Found chipset "AMD SB700/SB710/SB750", enabling flash write... OK. This chipset supports the following protocols: LPC,FWH,SPI. Found chip "Macronix MX25L8005" (1024 KB, SPI) at physical address 0xfff00000. Block protection could not be disabled! Reading flash... done.
==============================================================
At this point, I did a Google search for "Block protection could not be disabled", but did not find anything that said THIS MEANS YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO ERASE!
So, I forged ahead:
==============================================================
grml@grml /mnt/2011_home/netvista % ls -l *BST
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1048576 2011-04-12 05:57 88GAP901_BST_20110411.BST grml@grml /mnt/2011_home/netvista % cd Down*
grml@grml /mnt/2011_home/netvista/Downloads % ls -l *BST
-r--r--r-- 1 grml users 1048576 2011-04-10 07:43 88GAP804.BST
==============================================================
The above lines show that the file that I'm going to write with (88GAP804.BST) is the same size as the one that I saved from the chip (88GAP901_BST_20110411.BST).
==============================================================
grml@grml /mnt/2011_home/netvista/Downloads % sudo flashrom -w 88GAP804.BST
and this is the new file.
flashrom v0.9.2-r1141 on Linux 2.6.36-grml (i686), built with libpci 3.1.7, GCC 4.4.5 20100728 (prerelease), little endian flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org
Calibrating delay loop... OK. No coreboot table found. Found ITE Super I/O, id 8718 Found chipset "AMD SB700/SB710/SB750", enabling flash write... OK. This chipset supports the following protocols: LPC,FWH,SPI. Found chip "Macronix MX25L8005" (1024 KB, SPI) at physical address 0xfff00000. Block protection could not be disabled! Flash image seems to be a legacy BIOS. Disabling checks. Writing flash chip... Erasing flash before programming... Erasing flash chip...
ERASE FAILED at 0x0000000c! Expected=0xff, Read=0xec, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x00000fff: 0xf9d ERASE FAILED! ERASE FAILED at 0x0000000c! Expected=0xff, Read=0xec, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x0000ffff: 0xf8fa ERASE FAILED! ERASE FAILED at 0x0000000c! Expected=0xff, Read=0xec, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x0000ffff: 0xf8fa ERASE FAILED! ERASE FAILED at 0x0000000c! Expected=0xff, Read=0xec, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x000fffff: 0xdc5ed ERASE FAILED! ERASE FAILED at 0x0000000c! Expected=0xff, Read=0xec, failed byte count from 0x00000000-0x000fffff: 0xdc5ed ERASE FAILED! FAILED! ERASE FAILED! FAILED! Your flash chip is in an unknown state. Get help on IRC at irc.freenode.net (channel #flashrom) or mail flashrom@flashrom.org!
DO NOT REBOOT OR POWEROFF!
Can you re-run flashrom like above, but with the "-V" (--verbose) parameter ? Like this: sudo flashrom -V -w 88GAP804.BST
sudo flashrom -w 88GAP804.BST 8.37s user 0.07s system 99% cpu 8.489 total
==============================================================
So, since the erase failed, shouldn't I be okay? Unless my cats press a button or pull a wire, I will leave the machine on for a response.
Thank you very much for your help in advance!
----- bernard
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